


A Little Nightmare Music

by asuralucier



Category: In Bruges (2008)
Genre: Canon Typical Prejudice, Canon Typical Suicidal Thoughts and Attempt, Everything is terrible, Fortune Favours Tarot Fest 2019, Gen, I have never been to Vienna, I'd tag this crack but just lookit the canon, M/M, Not quite shipfic probably, Practice Fellatio, Ray is a terrible (former) rentboy, Terrible hitmen, Terrible holidays part two, or Budapest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:59:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21747916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: ”If Vienna was a person, it would be the type of fucker who breaks into your house to rob you bloody blind, and then murder your family,” Ray groused.Ken looked at him for a long moment before reaching for a handful of cents and dumping them onto the table. “Let’s see if we can’t scrounge you up enough for another pint.”Ken and Ray take a jaunt to Vienna to avoid Harry and it goes as well as you’d think.
Relationships: Ken & Ray (In Bruges), Ken/Ray (In Bruges)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Fortune Favors: Round One— Rider-Waite-Smith





	A Little Nightmare Music

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a bastardisation of a piece by Mozart (also incidentally the name of my favorite classical music comedy routine), in reference to two of Vienna’s nicknames as the City of Music and the City of Dreams. 
> 
> This is written in response to my Fortune Favours assignment, which included Justice (reversed), Two of Pentacles (reversed), and Eight of Swords (reversed). I probably did this hilariously wrong in that I didn’t ask myself a question and try to come up with an answer based on the cards, but I hope you can see the inspiration anyway. 
> 
> As always, the biggest of thanks go to ictus and flowerdeluce.

It belatedly occurred to Ray when he woke up on a train going to sodding nowhere that he was stuck living the plot of a really bad film, and couldn’t really get out. 

(More officially, Ray’s crumpled, too-expensive, one-way ticket listed sodding nowhere as Vienna, Austria. From Bruges, it took around eighteen hours not counting train changes and Ken had been blissfully asleep for most of it, the fucker. Ray tried to think of it in a more positive way, that Ken was older and needed more sleep, but that didn’t make him feel any better.) 

And because the world kept on giving, Ray was cracking for a piss. But at present, he couldn’t move, not even to turn his head. 

“Hey. Wake up,” Ray said, giving Ken’s head a hard shove where it’d clearly found an inextricable connection with the crook of Ray’s shoulder. Ken made a vague noise and stirred. To encourage him, Ray shoved him again, using his full weight as much as he could manage. This time, Ken actually moved and the sudden movement of his skull meeting the thick glass of the window seemed to do the trick. 

Or maybe not. The man moved away from him, and knocked his head against the glass once more without any help. As for whether it’d helped in other ways, well. 

“...Are we there yet?” Ken murmured, sleep pulling at his voice, fucking finally. 

Ray passed his eyes over to the window, where scenery, mountainous, grand, green, whatever the fuck passed them on by at a dizzying 300 kilometers an hour. And yet, time still seemed to drag on like the dull red light that claimed the toilet was still **OCCUPIED**. 

All this was fucking Bruges’s fault. 

Ray turned his attention away from the window. His shoes tap-tapped an uneven rhythm, and when he noticed what he was doing, he tried to still his feet, but that went just about as well as stilling the crazy shitstorm still stirring around in his skull. “What the fuck do you think?”

Ray, Ken, and their haphazardly packed luggage (one bag each, and just one measly gun with one clip already with one bullet or two spent) arrived in Vienna some twenty hours later. Train delays, more or less a fact of life. The fuck are you gonna do about it? 

Answer: get pissed.

But not before taking a piss. 

Ray left Ken in charge of looking after their luggage and strode briskly to the men’s room, hidden between a newsagent’s and one of those snack stalls that was advertising some sort of sandwich deal with a soda. No sign of the fabled Viennese weiner, not that Ray was gay for it or anything. At least Vienna looked halfway alive compared to Bruges and wasn’t just stuck in the Dark Ages. Ken had tried to argue this point as inaccurate, and that Bruges was more...stranded in the Renaissance. 

Ray’s response to that eloquent piece of discourse was to punch the guy in the face. There was still a dark bruise just below Ken’s left eye, but Ray hadn’t apologized, and Ken hadn’t brought up the Renaissance again, so. 

Maybe it was weird of him, but Ray liked a toilet with some grime. He didn’t like it when loos were clean, almost like loos were wanting to be something else. Something _more_ than a fucking loo. There was also the more immediate concern that nobody scored any coke in a loo that was trying to pass for an exhibition in the Louvre. Speaking of the Louvre, Ray had ducked in there once to take a leak. **DO NOT TOUCH. DO NOT PISS. PLEASE WASH YOUR FUCKING HÄNDE**. 

But that wasn’t anything. And it wasn’t like Ray was jonesing to tell anybody that, anyway. 

Vienna had been Ken’s idea. 

Ray had been too terrified at the idea of Harry flying over with the remnants of the IRA to finish the job to really argue. He would have gone anywhere to be away from fucking Bruges. At first, he’d worried about it, but looking around Wien Hapbahnhof, he felt himself slowly coming back to life. The place was unashamedly lived in the twenty-first century. Overhead, very new, technologically sound speakers announced the next delayed train from Prague. Prague, not Bruges. 

“Coffee?” Ken said, sticking a small paper cup in Ray’s direction. It was woefully tiny. 

“What’s this, an extra small?” Ray frowned down at the dark liquid. But he did need coffee, so his complaints ended there. Or -- not really. “What the fuck.” It was most definitely (pretty good) coffee, but barely two swallows, and what was pretty good coffee didn’t have the same kick as espresso, which this wasn’t. Not that Ray was a connoisseur of coffee or anything, he just knew. 

“Inflation,” said Ken, as if that was a goddamn answer. “Look. I’ve told you. Until we figure this out. It’s better if we stick to cash. How much have you got?” 

Ray checked his wallet. “Dunno.” 

“Ray.” 

Ray came away with a wad of cash. On normal days, it would be considered pretty good. Today, it was shit. He also remembered that he hadn’t yet been paid for the job they’d done in the Vatican but that was neither here nor there. “Okay, fine. Fucking hell. Here.” 

Ken took the stack from him and thumbed through the money with a familiarity that was a bit surprising. Then he frowned too. “That’s it?” 

“Yeah.”

Ken looked like he’d like very much to shoot himself in the head. The expression was so visceral that Ray had a slight panic over the exact location of the gun. The last time he’d seen it, the gun had been carelessly tossed on top of some socks with the safety still off. Ray tried to remember whose suitcase it was in. 

“Ray?” Ken’s voice floated somewhere nearby, as if discombobulated from the rest of him. “Hey, Ray?” 

“Ken, where’s the gun?” 

“What?” 

Ken had his hand outstretched, still holding out Ray’s wad of cash like some cocksucker. Nearby, a kid was watching them intently over the top of his handheld, like a little alien. Ray looked away from the kid before he could think about punching him in the face. Hastily, Ray stuffed the money back into his wallet. 

“Where’s the gun?” 

The kid was still watching them. Ray wasn’t looking at him now, but he could feel it, the beady, hungry little eyes, sucking the air right out of the back of his head. 

Ken stopped short and exhaled. His expression paused midway, as if he was thinking things through, cataloging the contents of his own luggage. Then he said, “Oh, shite.” 

In a dingy hotel room with only one fucking bed, Ray and Ken stood ankle deep in dirty laundry and didn’t even argue about who got the bed. Outside, was dead silent and it wasn’t even late. Ray wasn’t the religious sort, but if there was anything he’d learned from these few days of hellscape, it was that bad omens really did exist. Sometimes, eating a bad omelette at a less than stellar roadside bistro a block away from a certain Basilica did mean that a poor sucker’s life was about to be upended and shot to complete fucking shit. 

“Well,” said Ken, sinking down on the edge of the mattress. “That’s. Inconvenient.” 

“We don’t even have a _fucking gun_! We don’t even have a fucking --” Ray felt the air around him seize in a dizzying whirl. Then his legs gave, precisely when he didn’t want them to and before he could hit the ground, there was a firm grip hauling up under his pits and dragging him a few heavy inches to the bed and leaned him against it. 

A sound slap. It stung his cheek, woke him up. “What the _fuck_.” Ray blinked. 

“I really don’t need you to faint on me right now,” Ken said, by the way of explanation. “Do you want some ice? I think I saw an ice machine outside.” 

“Fine, whatever.” 

Ray waited until Ken had closed the door behind him that he got up. He moved slowly, as if half aware that his legs still might give out on him but he made it to the window. They were several storeys up. This high up, the cobblestones below looked exactly like the tops of smooth, round skulls. Probably enough if Ray tried to get a running start. 

Several minutes later, Ray’s increasingly desperate efforts to jump out of the window had come to nought. Some fucking clever somebody had painted over the hinges, making it impossible to open. Ray tapped his head against the thick glass with some force. And then he did it two more times just for good measure. 

Maybe if he put a chair through it. 

“Don’t tell me, you’re trying to jump out the window,” said Ken’s voice from somewhere behind him. Ray didn’t remember the door opening or closing, so who knew how long the other man had been standing there. “Please...just don’t do that.” 

Ken was hardly in Ray’s good books at the moment. The argument could also be comfortably made that the guy had never been in his good books, ever, but there was something about the way Ken said please that reached Ray’s bowels in a thoroughly uncomfortable way. So much so that he had to sit down. 

“Fuck,” Ray exhaled. “Don’t tell me, you threw away the gun on purpose.” 

Ken said, “Just have some ice, hey.” 

The ice, which was wrapped up in a bunch of sopping paper towel, dripped a wet trail from Ray’s bruise down to the edge of his trousers. At least it wasn’t his crotch. 

Ray glowered, gritting his teeth, “You _did_. You motherfucking dick arsewipe.” 

Ken knocked his knuckles against the window and peered down. “You probably wouldn’t die anyway, not even with a running start. Two more floors up, it’d be a sure thing.” 

“How the fuck would you know that?” 

Ken shrugged and stepped away once more. He looked down at Ray and extended a hand. “Come on, we’ll get a pint somewhere.” 

As far as Ray was concerned, the more he saw of Vienna (so far, about three big blocks full of fuck-all, a shit hotel, and a shit pub), the more he hated it. His pint was mostly head, and tasted like piss. 

The best part about the city, was clearly Wien Hapbahnhof. Which made a lot of sense because the train station was how people left the city. 

”If Vienna was a person, it would be the type of fucker who breaks into your house to rob you bloody blind, and then murder your family,” Ray groused, staring morosely at his empty glass.

Ken looked at him for a long moment before reaching for a handful of cents and dumping them onto the table. “Let’s see if we can’t scrounge you up enough for another pint, all right?” 

Ray watched with half an eye as Ken separated the coins into neat little piles. The world’s most dignified fucking homeless pervert. 

Finally, Ken said, “Here. That should be enough to get you the same again.” 

Before Ray thought too much about it, he swiped the coins off the table. “Why the fuck are we even here?” 

“We’re having a pint,” said Ken. 

“No, I mean. Here. In fucking _Vienna_.” 

Ken rubbed tiredly at his bruised eye and looked like Ray had knocked him one good again, although he hadn’t. “I’d always meant to see it again.” He drew in a deep breath after that, as if he was in a great deal of pain. “We came here once, the wife and me.” 

“That’s g --” Ray started, and then didn’t finish. He went to get another pint. Or maybe he’d get a half of one. So that Ken could have one, too. 

Later, they took stock of things again in their hotel room. Things were pretty dire. They couldn’t even afford one fucking ticket to get the fuck out of fucking Vienna. 

But at least there was still no sign of Harry, which was maybe a good thing. 

“That’s _it_?” 

“Yes, Ray.” Unlike before, there was an edge to his voice, like he was irritated. Ray didn’t exactly mind. It was high time that something fucking annoyed the shit out of Ken. “That’s it. So unless you want to pull some gold out of your fucking arse, that’s fucking _it_.” 

“You could have just let me die,” said Ray. “And that’s racist.” 

Ken sat down on the bed beside him. The bed was a double, but it was tiny. He breathed noisily, as if he was trying to keep a hold of himself. “It’s race-related. And I couldn’t.” 

This time, Ray saved himself some grief and didn’t ask him why. “So what now?” 

“I don’t know.” 

It was not a sex thing, but Ray let himself work up to it, he imagined Ken’s fleshy hands, and Ken’s fleshy arse and tried to convince himself that nothing could be worse than this. Absolutely nothing. “Actually. There’s. I used to do a thing.” 

“A thing.” Ken’s gaze was steady at the side of his head. Ray was still determined not to look at him. “Like what kind of a thing?” 

“Like a,” Ray swallowed thickly. “Rentboy kind of a thing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was. It was in Dublin, and it was a long time ago, but. I mean. We need money, right?” 

Ken stared at him for a good minute before he started trying to choke to death. Or not really, but he was wheezing pretty bad. “ _You_. You fucked around in _Dublin_.” 

“Whoa.” Ray raised both of his hands. “Nobody said anything about fucking. Nobody fucked me and I didn’t fuck anybody. It was more like.” 

“Like?” 

“Blowing,” said Ray. “A lot of blowing.” 

Ken’s arse was almost exactly the fleshy nightmare that Ray thought it would be and that somehow made things a million times worse. He forgot to imagine a prick with it, but now he didn’t have to because it was fucking staring at him in the face. It was not entirely soft he was loathed to touch it. 

“Quit _staring_ at me,” Ray scowled. “I can’t do it if you...look.” 

“Right,” said Ken. “I’m not looking now. But, you know.” 

“Shut up,” Ray said. 

“I’m just saying, a little practice probably wouldn’t hurt.” 

“I said shut _up_. I’m. Working on it. Okay? Fuck’s sake.” 

Ray squeezed his eyes shut and leaned forward. He smelled Ken (heavy, musky) before he tasted him and promptly couldn’t. He leaned away from Ken and stood, dusting off his trousers at the knees, as if he wanted to forget what had happened right away. 

“Fuck this. I have a better idea.” 

Ray had glass stuck in the fabric of his coat, the bit that was covering his left elbow and it was fast becoming clear that he was driving a rust bucket that was going to have serious trouble clearing eighty kilometers. Which was in itself, a brand of special hell. It’d been a long time since he’d stolen a car. Something else he was going to keep to himself. 

But still. At least the M4 would take them out of fucking Vienna eventually. 

Ken fiddled halfheartedly with the radio. It appeared broken. Finally, he gave up and asked, “So what’s in Budapest?” 

Ray kept his eyes straight on the road. “Not a fucking clue, mate. Not a fucking clue.”


End file.
